He concluded in words which, deeply impressive at the time, proved sadly prophetic now that his dead body lay in a bloody shroud where his living form then stood: "Sooner than surrender these principles, I would be assassinated on this spot.
Blaine reflects on Lincoln's powerful commitment to his principles, which tragically foreshadowed his assassination.
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But this is a totally different thing from an offensive war to punish the people for the political misdeeds of their State Government, or to enforce an acknowledgment that the Government of the United States is supreme.
Without the exercise of those functions which belong exclusively to the civil service, the laws cannot be executed in any event, no matter what may be the physical strength which the Government has at its command.
All these provisions are made to protect the States, not to authorize an attack by one part of the country upon another; to preserve the peace, and not to plunge them into civil war.
And if Congress shall break up the present Union by unconstitutionally putting strife and enmity and armed hostility between different sections of the country, instead of the domestic tranquility which the Constitution was meant to insure…
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